Check out our Monthly Survey Page to see what our users are running.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

While the state of Virtual/Mixed/Augmented Reality (XR) is constantly in flux and improving all the time, Unity have announced with Unity 2019.3 that their built-in XR support is being deprecated.

Unity 2019.3 is the next upcoming (Edit: now out after we published this) major build of the Unity game engine, currently in Beta and when released they're going to be pushing their newer unified XR plugin framework. It makes sense, giving developers of XR hardware the chance to get updates out a lot quicker, rather than waiting for engine upgrades.

With this change, Unity developed official XR plugins for "supported platforms" including ARKit, ARCore, Microsoft HoloLens, Magic Leap, Oculus, Windows Mixed Reality and PlayStation VR. Notice anyone missing? Valve. That's because Valve are developing their own OpenVR Unity XR plugin in-house. Hopefully this process will enable Valve to improve SteamVR support in Unity for Linux, since they will control the plugin.

Unity 2019.3 is also the first version of Unity that will properly support IL2CPP on Linux which the lack-of has caused issues for some developers.

You can read more about Unity's plans for XR on their blog post.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
13 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
7 comments

dejaime Jan 28, 2020
Unity 2019.3 is really building up to a great release.
sub Jan 28, 2020
And still no Valve Index restock.
Damn, I want to buy this kit before I come to the conclusion that it is too expensive.
a0kami Jan 28, 2020
Is this following any of the openXR specification ?
Is valve planning on doing that on their side ?
Ehvis Jan 28, 2020
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
I was worried for a second because there really is no working OpenXR solution for Linux yet. But it appears that they will keep the OpenVR support (in deprecated state) until Valve adds their own plugin into the XR framework.
Shmerl Jan 28, 2020
How is the progress of Valve replacing OpenVR with OpenXR? OpenXR spec came out a while ago already.
slembcke Jan 28, 2020
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
I'd be really interested to see where this ends up. The Unity editor kinda-mostly works on Linux, but in it's "preview" state is still missing some pretty big features. (ex: multi-threaded rendering, or the graphics debugger that relies on it)

VR in the Unity editor on Linux sometimes kinda-sorta works. Beyond the highly mediocre performance (editor struggles to run at 30 hz, while builds run just fine at 120 hz), it's just really unstable with regular lock ups. My current project requires restarting Unity every time I hit the play button a second time. GLX gets stuck waiting forever on a fence. I've been back to developing on Windows for the time being. Hard to blame them for not having stellar support for a niche product on a niche platform though. I'm thrilled that it works at all. :D

Hopefully the change will help clear out some of the dust and cobwebs.
Orkultus Jan 28, 2020
Like we get any Native VR games to begin with. I know we have a few...but.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.